Cagayan de Oro: Communist guerrillas abducted three villagers, including a policeman, and burned construction equipment in new attacks in the Philippines yesterday and condemned President Rodrigo Duterte as a "double-speaking thug" for terminating peace talks.
Government forces were pursuing the attackers, about 60 suspected New People's Army rebels who separately seized the three people and burned construction equipment in far-flung Talakag town in southern Bukidnon province, army officials said.
"The rebels burned a backhoe and two trucks at a construction company compound in Talakag apparently after failing to extort money from the firm, said Col Eric Vinoya, an army brigade commander in Bukidnon, a mountainous pineapple-growing region.
One of the other two abducted villagers was later found dead, officials said.
Separately, the Marxist rebels also burned two trucks transporting copper ore in the northern mountain town of Itogon in Benguet province but didn't harm the drivers, police said.
Army troops backed by rocket-firing MG520 helicopters were pursuing the rebels, Benguet police chief Senior Superintendent Florante Camuyot said.
Duterte lifted the government's ceasefire and discarded Norway-brokered peace talks with the rebels last week after the guerrillas abandoned their own truce and killed six soldiers and kidnapped two others in new flare-ups in the 48-year insurgency, one of Asia's longest-running.
"Duterte has gone berserk and upturned the entire peace process," the Communist Party of the Philippines said in a statement.
"His moves show "how difficult it is to conduct serious negotiations with a double-speaking thug who only recognizes his own rules."
"Duterte's all-out war will be completely frustrated," the communists said, citing how government troops have been overstretched fighting them and other insurgents.
